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Graduate Theses & Dissertations
Pages
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- Why do landowners restore wetlands? A case study from east central Ontario
- Wetlands were once widespread in southern Ontario, but many have been drained through land use changes. Using a case study of twelve landowners in the Kawartha region, I explored motivations for restoring wetlands. Psychological research suggests that people who are more connected to nature and attached to place are more likely to behave sustainably. Results showed that having land available and receiving funding were necessary preconditions. Connectedness to nature and place attachment were motivations, as were personal benefits and having a supportive social community. Challenges included: the Permit to Take Water, paperwork and bureaucracy, delays and timing, and economic restrictions. Positive outcomes were: increased property value and crop productivity; personal enjoyment of wetlands; and improved wildlife habitat and water quality. Negative outcomes were: `nuisance' wildlife, trespassing, and a lack or excess of water. This is a novel study exploring nature connectedness, place attachment and wetland restoration qualitatively in southern Ontario. Author Keywords: agriculture, connection to nature, motivation, southern Ontario, stewardship, wetland restoration
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- Application of One-factor Models for Prices of Crops and Option Pricing Process
- This thesis is intended to support dependent-on-crops farmers to hedge the price risks of their crops. Firstly, we applied one-factor model, which incorporated a deterministic function and a stochastic process, to predict the future prices of crops (soybean). A discrete form was employed for one-month-ahead prediction. For general prediction, de-trending and de-cyclicality were used to remove the deterministic function. Three candidate stochastic differential equations (SDEs) were chosen to simulate the stochastic process; they are mean-reverting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process, OU process with zero mean, and Brownian motion with a drift. Least squares methods and maximum likelihood were used to estimate the parameters. Results indicated that one-factor model worked well for soybean prices. Meanwhile, we provided a two-factor model as an alternative model and it also performed well in this case. In the second main part, a zero-cost option package was introduced and we theoretically analyzed the process of hedging. In the last part, option premiums obtained based on one-factor model could be compared to those obtained from Black-Scholes model, thus we could see the differences and similarities which suggested that the deterministic function especially the cyclicality played an essential role for the soybean price, thus the one-factor model in this case was more suitable than Black-Scholes model for the underlying asset. Author Keywords: Brownian motion, Least Squares Method, Maximum Likelihood Method, One-factor Model, Option Pricing, Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Process
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- Geospatial Analysis of Late Paleoindan Hi-Lo Points in Ontario and New York
- This thesis analyzes variability in a sample (n=302) of late Paleoindian Hi-Lo points from Ontario and New York. Biface variability is recorded using landmark geometric morphometrics. Raw material data is used to assess Hi-Lo toolstone usage patterns and the impact of raw material constraints on manufacture. Statistical analyses are used to assess patterning of variability in space. Spatial results are interpreted using cultural transmission theory in terms of their implications for the geographic scale of social learning among Hi-Lo knappers. Results of the spatial analyses are related to theory about hunter-gatherer social networks in order to understand the effects of hypothesized settling in processes on late Paleoindian knappers. Results indicate random spatial patterning of Hi-Lo variability. The absence of spatial autocorrelation for Hi-Lo size indicates that settling in processes were not sufficiently pronounced during the late Paleoindian period to manifest as inter-regional variability within the Hi-Lo type. Author Keywords: Biface Variability, Cultural Transmission, Geometric Morphometrics, Hi-Lo, Late Paleoindian, Ontario
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- While the Lonely Mingle with Circumstance
- Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy focuses on the idea that no human subject exists outside of their relationship to other people. Each of us holds a profound degree of responsibility to and for all others. Since responsibility is fundamental to human (co)existence, it does not impede on freedom but proves that the sovereign individual is a dangerous myth: any philosophical, political or economic system which places us in antagonism is inherently violent and arguably fallacious. Many instances of injustice and violence can be attributed to advances in technological rationality and other forces of modern egoism with historical roots. By forwarding a somewhat politicized interpretation of Totality and Infinity and drawing on Jacques Derrida’s landmark reading of Levinas, this thesis explores the implications of Levinas’ thought for modern politics and the potential of Levinasian ethics as a remedy for both the alienation of the modern subject and the continued justification of oppression. Author Keywords: Ethics, Levinas, Other, Relation, Responsibility, Subjectivity
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- Critical Topographies of two films
- The following thesis is a work in Critical Topography that choses as its site of study two documentary films. The films being studied are El Sol del Membrillo by Victor Erice and Rivers and Tides by Thomas Riedelsheimer. My approach to critical topography in the thesis is twofold: first, I have traced the topical motifs that have appeared to me as I looked at the two films; second, I have translated the films into writing –with the purpose of creating a sourcebook for my analysis- thus bounding the visual content of the films into the delineated space of the written word. I have sought in my analysis to make visible the numerous conceptual, aesthetic, and philosophical notions that are repeated in each film. These notions include materiality, formal operations, temporality, memory, and failure. All of which are ideas that find expression - despite their significant differences - in both documentary films. Author Keywords: Art, Critical Topography, Film Studies, Land Art, Painting, Time
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- Utilizing Class-Specific Thresholds Discovered by Outlier Detection
- We investigated if the performance of selected supervised machine-learning techniques could be improved by combining univariate outlier-detection techniques and machine-learning methods. We developed a framework to discover class-specific thresholds in class probability estimates using univariate outlier detection and proposed two novel techniques to utilize these class-specific thresholds. These proposed techniques were applied to various data sets and the results were evaluated. Our experimental results suggest that some of our techniques may improve recall in the base learner. Additional results suggest that one technique may produce higher accuracy and precision than AdaBoost.M1, while another may produce higher recall. Finally, our results suggest that we can achieve higher accuracy, precision, or recall when AdaBoost.M1 fails to produce higher metric values than the base learner. Author Keywords: AdaBoost, Boosting, Classification, Class-Specific Thresholds, Machine Learning, Outliers
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- Workplace Bullying in Ontario Healthcare Settings
- This thesis builds on scholarship that highlights how expected gender roles serve to both normalize and obscure forms of violence and hostility in health care workplaces. An analysis of 25 labour arbitrations involving cases of bullying reveals how gender relations is a factor in these grievances and relevant policies in Ontario health care facilities. Reinforced by underlying expectations around women as nurturing and men as aggressive, responses to bullying are found to reflect and reproduce embedded gendered power inequalities in labour. While bullying in the workplace is often treated in policy discussions as an individual and identity-neutral phenomenon, this research provides evidence to the contrary. As a consequence, we must interrogate existing legislation and policies, asking how we can develop approaches that account for, respond to, and mitigate the causes of bullying rooted in unequal power relations, including gendered ones. Author Keywords: gender, health care, labour arbitration, policy, workplace bullying, workplace harassment
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- Civil Aviation and Scheduled Air Services in Colonial Botswana, 1935-1966
- This thesis provides an in-depth and chronological study of the development of civil aviation in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (today’s Botswana), and the role played by the British Government in the development of this form of transport. The thesis argues that Her Majesty’s Government’s neglect and very little interest in its protectorate’s civil aviation represented a form of underdevelopment. The study also reveals the constant contradiction between the neglect of the imperial government and the constant lobbying on the part of colonial administration in the Protectorate for the establishment of an air service. To the colonial administrators, civil aviation represented a symbol of modernity and progress as well as more practical advantages such as mobility. The thesis finally concludes that the Bechuanaland Protectorate’s first airline was established due to growing nationalism both locally and on the continent, at large. The British Government facilitated the establishment of the airline as an attempt to appear benevolent to the protectorate on the eve of independence. Author Keywords:
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- Anarchist Periodical Press in the United States
- This dissertation focuses on the English-language anarchist periodical press in the United States in the 1890s and early 1900s. Each of the three chapters of this dissertation examines one anarchist paper and its coverage of a specific issue. The first chapter focuses on Prison Blossoms, which was started by Alexander Berkman, Carl Nold, and Henry Bauer and written and circulated in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, and its engagement with Alexander Berkman's attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. The second chapter examines Free Society, a weekly edited primarily by Abraham Isaak, and its contributors' writings on the assassination of President William McKinley by self-described anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Finally, the third chapter focuses on The Demonstrator, specifically its first volume which was edited by James F. Morton Jr. from the intentional community of Home, Washington, and the paper's work in supporting John Turner, the first anarchist targeted for deportation under the Immigration Act of 1903. Drawing upon critical discourse analysis, this dissertation incorporates examination of the context in which these papers were written (particularly the immediate concerns to which the papers' authors responded), the form and generic conventions of the anarchist press, including the approaches of the papers' respective editors, and the arguments advanced by their authors. It pays particular attention to the intertextuality of the anarchist press -- the ways in which those writing in anarchist papers addressed one another both within and across periodicals, generating anarchist thought through conversation and debate and enacting their anarchist ideals in the practice of publishing. This dissertation demonstrates that the anarchist periodical press, an element of anarchist history that has received little attention, offers important insights: it details how anarchists immediately responded to important issues of their time, and reveals the ways in which the emergence of anarchism was itself a collective effort, emerging from conversation, debate, and disagreement about how best to create radical change and what that change should look like. Author Keywords: anarchism, anarchist periodicals, critical discourse analysis, Free Society, Prison Blossoms, The Demonstrator
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- Situating Copper Bells in Prehispanic Southwest Societies
- This thesis examines the spatial, temporal, and contextual distribution of copper bells in the Greater Southwest region and how they are situated in archaeological literature. To date, 672 copper bells have been found in at least 113 different Southwestern sites dating from ca. A.D. 900-1450, though there is no archaeological evidence for metallurgical activities in the area at this time. The origin of copper bells has been assumed to be West Mexico, a region known for its metallurgical traditions and whose inhabitants produced copious amounts of similar bells. Various lists of copper bells discovered have been compiled over the years, but little consideration has been given to the role these artifacts may have played in Southwestern societies. Copper bells are frequently labelled as prestige goods in archaeological literature, a term which fails to account for their significant depositional variation. By updating the database of known Southwestern copper bells, it becomes possible to examine these contextual distributions in greater detail. It is concluded that the prestige goods model is not suitable for Southwestern copper bells in many cases, and that alternative frameworks such as inalienable possessions are a better fit for these artifacts. Author Keywords: Archaeology, copper bells, inalienable possesions, interaction, U.S. Southwest
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- Reconceptualizing Immigration in Canada
- This thesis challenges the contemporary framework of immigration in Canada. Despite Canada’s effort to promote cultural diversity and multicultural citizenship, immigration policy in the last decade has moved towards a model of cultural assimilation. The recent Bill—Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act—devalues non-European cultures and hinders the successful integration for new immigrants. The problem of contemporary immigration in Canada lies in the narrow and exclusive understanding of immigration. That is, the current immigration framework is rooted in Eurocentrism, which draws exclusively from the economic and cultural values of the West. The Eurocentric understanding of migration not only hinders the successful integration for new immigrants, but it also hinders economic growth and weakens the social cohesion of Canada. For this reason, this thesis offers an alternative framework for understanding immigration. I focus on Chinese migration in Canada and take an interdisciplinary and a conceptual approach in order to present an inclusive understanding of Chinese migration. In particular, I apply the idea of "connected histories" to the context of immigration, and I demonstrate that immigration is a complex and interconnected phenomenon which cannot be reduced to the narratives of economics and ‘Canadian values.’ Instead, immigration should be understood as a process of transnational interactions because it not only allows us to understand benefits that transnational interactions would bring to immigrants, their country of origin and Canada, but it also recognizes different values and the agency of immigrants. Author Keywords: Bill C-24, Chinese Canadians, Eurocentrism, Immigration, Multicultrualism, Transnational
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- Re-Living the Residential School Experience
- The residential school legacy is one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history. From the mid-1850s to 1996, thousands of Aboriginal children were taken from their homelands and placed in residential schools. Taken against their will, many dreaded attending these schools. Some attended for as long as ten to fifteen years, only to be strangers in their own communities upon their return. In the past thirty years, survivors began disclosing the loneliness, confusion, fear, punishment and humiliation they suffered within these institutions, and also reported traumatic incidents of sexual, physical or emotional abuse. These childhood traumas still haunt them today. This dissertation examines the four compensation processes (Litigation, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Independent Assessment Process and the Common Experience Process) used by survivors to determine whether the compensation payments made to them assisted in reconciliation of their residential school experience. To complete an analysis of the processes, twenty-four residential school survivors from Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia were interviewed about their experiences with one or more of the compensation processes. The study begins with a historical overview of the residential school legacy and continues with the residential school healing movement that initiated and finalized a negotiated settlement agreement for all living survivors. This dissertation provides a unique perspective to the residential school legacy by using a cultural framework, Anishinabe teachings and concepts to share the voices of residential school survivors. The pivotal Anishinabe teaching within this study comes from The Seventh Fire Prophecy. This prophecy states that: “If the New People will remain strong in their quest, the Waterdrum of the Midewiwin Lodge will again sound its voice.” In this dissertation the residential school survivors are the New People. As the dissertation unfolds the author utilizes various Anishinabe concepts to illustrate how the compensation processes failed to assist the New People to reconcile with their residential school experience. This study presents a medicine wheel understanding of reconciliation and the Residential School Legacy. It concludes with an important message to the second and third generation survivors to continue the reconciliatory efforts that the New People introduced. It is crucial that the children and grandchildren of the New People begin the reconciliation process not only for themselves but for the next seven generations. Author Keywords: Anishinabe, compensation, Indian residential schools, reconciliation, survivors